alt Hacker NewsIf juniors ignore guidance and advice, they stay in junior roles, handling simpler, less impactful tasks.
Everyone seeks career growth, but pushing for it too quickly often just leads to inflated titles without real substance.
It’s perfectly fine to remain a mid-level engineer for your entire career if it makes you happy; it’s solid, honest work that contributes meaningfully. Plenty of people in their 60s have held the same job for decades, and that’s okay; it can be a path to genuine satisfaction.
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I don't want career growth, rather homeostasis. That is, growth that matches the rate of decay.
At most, maybe something like "tissue remodelling" to be lean, clean and flexible, so to speak, but not "big".
And what if no junior under a certain senior ever makes it past junior?
Any mentor type figure is going to be at least partially evaluated by progress of the mentees against some benchmark.
> Everyone seeks career growth, but pushing for it too quickly often just leads to inflated titles without real substance.
That's why I'm not a big fan of recommending people to often and quickly change jobs to increase titles and pay. Their skills don't level up the same way, and they end up with a title of senior/lead developer and can't actually build maintainable systems or solve problems that nobody tells them the solution to.
A junior or "mid" who doesn't take guidance repeatedly should likely be managed out.
It's perfectly fine remain "mid" (not junior IMHO) but is not ok to ignore guidance and advice from more experienced team members.